Revenge (2018)

Revenge (2018)

3.5

The plot is pretty simple, as it should be, but this film has layers to explore. A wealthy French douchebag takes his hot mistress out to his private villa and invites his fellow horny rich hunting buddy’s. One thing leads to another, and the hot mistress (Jen, played by Matilda Anna Ingrid Lutz) is left for dead in the desert.

Revenge is billed as an action horror flick, but the emphases here is on the action while it plays with your expectations in interesting ways. You see, the victim here is usually the first one to be killed in a horror film. She’s the cute, not terribly bright, sexually forward, flirty girl; the one Freddy or Jason kill first to make sure everyone else in the story gets serious.

These films are usually androcentric, all male POV and loaded with phallic imagery, but Revenge is gynocentric, telling the story from the female victim’s point of view. As our protagonist enacts her revenge, she repurposes the guys’ hunting toys to emasculate and punish. She doesn’t turn into Rambo overnight, however, so it was refreshing to see a somewhat realistic approach to the action.

Revenge isn’t a fun film, it’s way too serious and bloody (some scenes are hard to watch) but it is a fresh twist on the revenge genre. Visually it shares more than a passing resemblance to a Michael Bay movie, but director Coralie Fargeat, thankfully, keeps the showy visuals and camera work Bay-light, and it works well with Robin Coudert’s 80’s era inspired music. Matilda Anna Ingrid Lutz isn’t given much dialogue, but she looks cool as the Mad-Max-ready barefooted half-naked desert warrior carrying a shotgun half her size. I recommend you check this one out.